We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Brian Harding. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Brian below.

Hi Brian, thanks for joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

The mission of my company, Service Industry Success, is this: Accelerate and simplify growth and progress for our client family with proven, practical, actionable, step-by-step solutions.

I stumbled upon my mission completely by accident.

In 2018, I was a business owner in a service-based industry, with about 45 or so employees. We had built our company almost entirely through networking, So, it’s no surprise that the journey of my mission began at a networking meeting.

I was at a table with several other people attending a networking meeting, when one of the people there – a business coach – passed around a low-cost guide she was selling on how to read financials. This was a introductory product into her coaching services. The guide was passed around the table and when it got to me, as I looked it over, I noticed that a critical piece of this tool was factually wrong. Thinking that maybe there was some new way to analyze a P&L that I just didn’t know, I called my CPA to ask if I was just missing something. Her reply was something like, “Of course that’s not right. A business owner doing that would be creating some real problems for themselves.”

So, I began to wonder… How could a “business coach” not know this tool she was selling was wrong?

What I eventually learned, was this business coach, as well as many other business coaches, had never actually owned a business. In fact, of the 12 business consultants and coaches I personally knew at the time, only one had ever actually owned and operated a business themselves.

When I thought back to difficult times we had gone through within my own company’s growth, and considered how things could have gone if we had hired a coach who had not actually every owned a business – or had a fundamental understanding of financials, for example – it really made me angry.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I started out just putting on classes at supply houses, chamber of commerce meetings, industry association meetings, and for other professional groups on topics like: understanding and reading financials, creating, implementing, and improving processes and procedures, and improving customer experiences.

Now I work with business owners and business leaders both one-on-one, and in small groups. I help them grow and make progress by teaching specific strategies that I learned from fantastic mentors I’ve had throughout my career. Specifically, I help my clients develop teams and processes which allow them to reach financial, freedom, customer retention, employee retention, and other types of goals which result in working less, scaling more, as well as dramatically improving their levels of clarity and confidence.

What sets me apart is that I have actually done all of things I help my clients to now. I started a business from scratch in my living room, and scaled it to over 50 employees which allowed me to work only a few days per week when I successfully sold my shares a few years ago. I don’t teach or suggest things that are theoretical. I wouldn’t hire a piano teacher who had only read books on how to play the piano, and I don’t position myself as an expert on strategies and tactics I haven’t personally used.

I am most proud of the measurable progress my clients see and feel. Sometimes it’s easily measurable things like working fewer hours each week, or increasing revenue and profit. But, most of the time it’s more intangible, but also more meaningful progress, like not feeling like their business owns them, feeling more like they are steering the ship rather than being at the mercy of uncontrollable forces, or utilizing known strategies instead of making reactive decisions that they are not confident in.

It makes me very happy to help others in the same way my great mentors helped me. None of us is born with all the various skills, abilities, and knowledge necessary to successful run a business. They all must be learned. And there are only two ways to learn: through mistakes or mentorship. I’m happy to be a trusted resource and partner to my clients.

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

Like many businesses with large fleets of vehicles when texting became a common method of communication, texting and driving turned into a habit that was very costly – and in our case, nearly catastrophic.

For a couple of years around 2017 and 2018, we had a rash of vehicle accidents that was truly staggering. It seemed like every month or two, we were crashing one of our vehicles into another. Eventually, this pattern caught up with us, and our insurance company notified us that we would not be renewed.

Our belief that we would simply just go find another carrier, and pay some higher premiums, proved to be overly optimistic. We were turned down by carriers, left and right – even high risk providers we assumed would not be a challenge to get acceptance with.

Luckily, we had received notice from our current carrier a few months in advance of our term expiration, and we had enough time to put together a demonstrably effective plan to solve our pattern of vehicle accidents. Getting a meaningful plan quickly in place tested us on every level – from gaining sincere employee buy-in and commitment to developing processes that would work in the real world, not just on paper.

Getting a plan in place was just part of the solution though. We still had to get a carrier to believe in it, even now that so many had passed on us. One company finally agreed to take a look at us and brought in a person from out of town to assess our risk with our new plan in place.

We made our case in a meeting, and they told us they would let us know. By now, we were only a couple of weeks from our term expiring. If this carrier passed on us, we did not have a back up plan. We didn’t even know who we might call next. We were legitimately facing the prospect of having built a multi-million dollar company, with over 40 employees and going out of business because we couldn’t get insurance.

It took 8 days for the carrier to give us an answer. For 8 days and nights I didn’t sleep much or think about much else. Finally, they told us they were going to give us a chance because of the accident prevention processes we had put in place.

It was the scariest period of time I ever had as a business owner.

We’d appreciate any insights you can share with us about selling a business.

I sold my shares of my company in 2021, and now I help business owners build a business that is a sellable asset, not just a job for the business owner.

There are a few things that I learned going through the process of selling. Some are more obvious than others. An obvious example would be something like maintaining an awareness, well in advance (like several years) of the sale, the nobody wants to buy a job. They want to buy an autonomous, money printing machine. So building an autonomous, money printing machine should be our goal. Even if we don’t ever want to sell, this is the type of business that will give us the most freedom when we make big, lifestyle decisions which are greatly impacted by how much time our business requires us to be actively engaged.

Other things are much less obvious. For example, when deciding the best way to sell a business, we will need to balance or weigh competing priorities against each other, like: our legacy, maintaining a relationship with employees, having control over the transaction, transaction speed, getting maximum financial compensation, ease and simplicity, and risk avoidance. Each of these is a very compelling priority, but in no case will we be able to have all of them to the degree we would like when selling. Some will have to be sacrificed for others.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.serviceindustrysuccess.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brian.l.harding.business.coach
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianlharding/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrianLHarding
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@serviceindustrysuccesssis6589
• Other: Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/c-749893 Facebook business page: https://www.facebook.com/serviceindustrysuccess LinkedIn business page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/23742219/admin/feed/posts/